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You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
Today's blog is more gee whiz, here comes the Internet tsunami to transform education, and I know we've heard it before - first, radio was going to be the panacea and then it was televsion, and of course they did nothing of the sort. But I really think the Internet is transformative: I mean, look at what it's done to movies and books and communications and banking. Look at Google and Facebook and amazon.com.
And in this vein I offer Forbes Magazine's cover story on Salman Khan. And to get a clearer picture of what's coming down the pike, read this interview with Mr. Khan. Here's a crucial excerpt, outlining where the Khan Academy is headed. H/T JE
"A lot of the criticism I have [gotten] is “There is no such thing as a silver bullet. The Khan Academy is not going to solve education’s problems.” And we agree with that 100 percent. At the same time, we think we’re at the very top of the first inning. Over the next five years we are going to be investing heavily, more than anyone, in analytics that give you a dynamic assessment. What does a student know? What does a student not know? How effective is the tutorial? That is what is exciting. That is the possibility of doing experimentation at Internet speed with Internet scales of data. So what you see today at Khan Academy is a very crude approximation of where we’ll be in five or 10 years. And even that won’t be the silver bullet. But we’ll be moving in the right direction."
) and despite evidence that they’re failing children and squandering tax payers’ money on useless methods they remain self-righteously complacent. The Khan Academy on the other hand wants to evaluate whether or not their programmes are benefiting students, and the Khan Academy also wants to evaluate students, to see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. hmmm. Talk about polar opposites!
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